


Which Direction We Are Going

by SBG



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-09
Updated: 2014-12-09
Packaged: 2018-02-28 18:43:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2743157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SBG/pseuds/SBG
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve's life had always followed a certain direction, one he'd thought was the right one. Now, he wasn't so sure that was true.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Which Direction We Are Going

**Author's Note:**

> This one got a bit navel-gazy. Whoops? Tis the season! I also did a bit of a repeat from No Earthly Way of Knowing, a technique upon which I generally frown. Oh, and this one goes with that one.

He felt like a rubber band stretched too far, read to snap under the pressure. It was a usual and customary feeling after what he’d endured, and he’d be fine. He always was. Steve had trained long and hard to withstand far worse than Wo Fat had ever doled out on him; he should not still feel this far on edge. The only thing that made this recovery different from any of the others was Danny. Danny’s constant presence was a good thing. He wasn’t going to argue that. Something about his partner always eased him, deep down and in an indefinable way. Though his partner often stated otherwise, Danny was one of a very few who truly got him. Since minute one, there had been something – a spark, a connection – between him and Danny. It was something he’d learned not to take for granted.

But Steve needed Danny to go away. 

It wasn’t Danny’s fault. He couldn’t have known. Steve didn’t want him to, after all. His dreams had been variations of a theme, long after the drugs and the shock had both worn off. They were bittersweet only upon waking. In them, his father was alive, whole and happy. Living in them, Steve had found contentment he’d never thought possible, Danny had saved his father and he was able to put right his strained relationship with his dad. In the cold, harsh light of reality, though, Danny hadn’t saved John McGarrett. There was no happy ending. It wasn’t rational, but Steve resented his partner for that failure. His Danny was supportive and loyal and a friend almost to a fault, but whatever his virtues were, he hadn’t come through for Steve in the way his subconscious most wanted and having Danny there had been a reminder he didn’t want and couldn’t handle. 

Danny as his new shadow became even more unbearable, _after_. After he’d woken to the shock of his hands wringing Danny’s neck. As if the misplaced resentment hadn’t been bad enough on its own, now every time he looked at Danny, instead of that disappointment all he saw were finger-shaped bruises. Steve knew for a fact the event had been as traumatic for Danny as it had been post-traumatic for himself, wouldn’t ever, ever forget that expression on his partner’s face when he finally came back to himself from … one dream he couldn’t recall, but knew it hadn’t been _Danny_ he was fighting. Danny had been shit-scared, but there was something else there too, a calm peace Steve was certain had been intended for him. A message for him, if it came to the worst. 

The look of total absolution, the memory of it, was almost as bad as the bruises his own hands had deposited on Danny’s neck. All this time, he’d been so resentful of Danny for doing something no one could have done. John was dead. What was dead, stayed dead. So he had given up his irrational irritation for something worse – guilt. Steve had always been able to count on one hand the number of people in his life he genuinely, soul-deep loved or had loved. Danny made him start using the second hand. Walking around knowing that he’d almost killed a loved one, it was too much, but no matter what he did Danny was there. He couldn’t take it. He couldn’t even begin to articulate what had become a swirling mass of darkness in his gut. He didn’t want to unleash even more damage onto anyone, onto Danny, and he couldn’t seem to make his partner understand. 

“I don’t want to hurt anyone.” Steve knew he was dangerous to be around. He was an incendiary device, set to go off but without a timer. When he exploded, it would be random, controlled by forces inside himself, yet also so completely outside of him. “I don’t want to hurt _you_.”

Danny looked at him for a moment, so many things flashing across his face. He’d always accused Steve of having faces, but Danny’s faces were a thing to behold in their own right. And on his was that understanding Steve didn’t think was possible. 

“I’m not hurt.” Danny lifted a hand, as if to silence Steve. “I’m not hurt, not really, and I’m not going away. You don’t have to do this alone…”

Steve couldn’t hear the words for the static in his ears. He didn’t need to hear them. As always, Danny was there, pulling at him. Pulling and pushing, tugging and drawing him out into the cold, harsh light of reality he didn’t want to face. Danny hadn’t saved his father, but he had saved him, time and time over. Danny was, in fact, saving him right at this moment, whether he was ready to admit it or not. 

“Danny, you don’t know…” _What is going on in my head, how much I can’t stand you near and can’t bear to think of you far, what if I’m too broken this time…_

“I don’t care if you don’t think I can handle it. I can. Don’t do what I did, Steve,” Danny whispered. He swallowed a few times. “Just don’t.”

For the first time since his team had dragged him out of Wo Fat’s torture room, Steve’s brain went somewhere other than back there, into the fantasy of having his father still with him or any of a dozen other traumatic experiences he’d endured himself. He had a mental image, of dust motes and dim light. He could smell the acrid scent of guns, one gun in particular, recently fired. And Danny, wrecked and broken and then just gone silent and away. Steve should have known. He should have been able to put the pieces together before now, but he’d been too caught up in the what-if a damned cocktail of drugs had bestowed on him to see how very much Danny did get it. Not the specifics, no, but the oppressive weight of it all.

Steve began to talk, halfway unmeaning to. Nothing of what had been playing consciously in his mind came out. He didn’t know how to handle any of that, the mixed emotions when it came to this man standing in front of him with tears in his eyes. He couldn’t tell Danny any of that, never would because he knew most of it was shit. He could talk about Wo Fat. He could talk about his father and his mother. But he couldn’t deal with Danny yet, not that. He just … talked until there were no more words, and suddenly Danny pulled him into a hug. He couldn’t do this with Danny, break down again, but he _wanted_ to. So much. 

He held himself stiff at first, but it didn’t take long for him to feel him doing what he didn’t want. Danny. Always Danny, breaking him and mending him. When he relaxed into the hug, it was as if everything that he’d been carrying flooded out of him. It left him weak as a kitten, shaking and uncertain what he was supposed to do. It didn’t surprise him at all that Danny seemed to take the added weight and hold it. 

“I’d do anything for you,” Danny said, his face tucked against Steve’s neck. His breath was a warm gust. “I love you, Steven.”

Jesus. _Jesus_. Steve clung to Danny like a lost child, found.

H50H50H50

Time didn’t bring him clarity, exactly, though with it he did manage to find some peace. Once Steve stopped fighting Danny’s omnipresence, he realized how much he’d come to rely on his partner despite himself. This level of Danny being in his space might be abnormal, but the guy had found every chink in Steve’s armor a long time ago, and not the armor that everyone else got to see. It was that internal shield most didn’t have the chance to know existed that Danny had somehow penetrated, without even trying. The place where he locked the deepest of his secrets, his joys and his pains. In the scheme of recovering from his recent experiences, Danny’s reliability was comforting.

It was also terrifying. For many reasons, not the least of which was his own uncertainty with what he might be feeling when it came to Danny. Emphasis on the might. He was still too close to the torture to know for sure what his thoughts and feelings actually meant, if they were real or imagined. He couldn’t trust his brain to tell him the truth, not quite yet. It was easier to tell himself that than contemplate that it might all be straightforward and easy if only he’d let it be.

“You want?” Danny asked. 

“No, I’m full, thanks,” Steve said, refusing the offered last piece of garlic bread.

It had taken him a while to notice it, but it became readily apparent that for Danny, healing and food were symbiotic. Steve had eaten more carbs in the past week than he had in months put together, and the strangest thing about it was how little he cared. There might actually be something to the food-as-healer thing. Weight Watchers would probably agree with him. 

“Okay.” Danny shrugged and munched on the bread himself. As he stood and started clearing the table, he gave Steve a wink. “Can’t let it go to waste. Won’t be as good tomorrow.”

Steve snorted and shook his head, the reaction he knew Danny was looking for. Danny had come a long way from burning frittatas in his kitchen and Steve had genuinely enjoyed everything that had been put in front of him. It had all brought a certain amount of satisfaction for his soul as well as his stomach. There was no permanency in food, though. No matter how tasty a dish, the payoff vanished when it did. For Steve, the food was secondary comfort. No, his primary takeaway was Danny’s company. Sometimes he thought he and Danny were like oil and water, but then sometimes he was sure their differences were what made them work so well together, what carried their work partnership over into something deeper. 

He enjoyed being around his partner, there was nothing new about that. What had started out four years ago as exasperated fondness had turned into unadulterated fondness in short order. He wasn’t sure when it had happened, so seamless was the transition. He wasn’t usually one to let people in so easily, but the team was different. _Danny_ was different. Steve could always rely on his partner to provide a unique counterpoint to his own methods and opinions, often coming at things from angles Steve would never have considered. Danny’s relentless care for Steve now was an example of it – Steve had wanted nothing more than to wallow in the what-ifs his drug-hazed mind had created, to lick his wounds in private with the memory of his father as his only company. That hadn’t been acceptable to Danny and he’d stuck around until Steve saw his reasoning. Like there had been any other choice.

What a difference Danny’s reactions were from his conversation with Catherine. He’d called her once his head was in a better place, expecting … he didn’t know. More. He was embarrassed now to admit he’d expected her to come back for him. He’d traveled half the globe for her and would do it again, but she could only tell him that she’d found her place without him, that he shouldn’t hang his hopes on her in any way. The whole conversation had left him with a lingering stink of humiliation he couldn’t shake. It had also been followed by Danny bringing out the big guns – his grandmother’s lasagna and garlic bread. The ultimate comfort food, he’d said, could cure any ailment. Steve couldn’t be sure if Danny understood where the real comfort lay, for the first time in their partnership wasn’t able to read Danny.

Steve’s smile was bittersweet as he watched his partner balance their plates, silverware and glasses as he headed for the kitchen. He couldn’t help but linger on the breadth of Danny’s shoulders, the taper down to a lean waist, the curve of his lower back. His partner was small, but built well. Built to carry his own weight and that of others. Steve’s. He hadn’t been able to stop seeing his hands around Danny’s throat until Danny gave him something else to focus on, something better. Danny’s arms around him, his words laden with so much emotion.

That moment had changed things. He’d gone from thinking of Danny as an interloper in his realm of pain, someone who hadn’t done what was impossible by saving his father, to needing Danny there in even more ways than he could say. He wasn’t sure what that meant, how quickly he always shifted when it came to Danny. They’d settled into this strange sort of domestic routine, something he thought he should find odd but instead found amazing. They didn’t do a lot of navel gazing about what they’d both been through, simply carried about life. After all, he thought, that was what healing was about – living. Now, he couldn’t help but compare and contrast Danny’s reaction to his need for support with Catherine’s. 

It meant something. Steve wanted it to mean something. Everything. At the same time, he wondered if he was just rebounding. From what had happened to him, from what had happened to Danny, from Catherine. He had to be careful. He had to gauge the hazards. 

“Hey, McGarrett,” Danny shouted from the other room, “in the civilized world, the guy who did all the slaving in the kitchen to prepare the meal isn’t saddled with the clean up on his own.”

He thought he knew now why the only other constant in his drugged visions besides his father was Danny. It was always Danny.

“I’m still injured,” he shouted back.

“Not working anymore, Steve. Get your lazy ass in here and give me a hand.”

Steve smiled, no traces of bittersweet left. He might not know exactly where he was going, but for now where he was, was just about perfect.

H50H50H50

The music drifted across the beach, distance giving it an almost dreamy quality. Deb was keeping it old school. Apart from Nicky’s cliché-ridden officiating, the whole affair had been very classic and classy. He’d expect nothing less from her. Steve needed a breather from the wedding festivities, though, and walked slowly along the beach, shoes abandoned and slacks rolled up to his calves. Things were … good. Things were fine. He had been trying to convince himself of that for weeks now, in his quest to get back to normal. He really had. He couldn’t seem to find the right rhythm, and this latest case and the distractions of his Aunt Deb’s nuptials to a not-so-bad mob lawyer didn’t help. Things had been great before, was the problem. They’d been better than great, until Danny had deemed him fit to live on his own.

It turned out that normal wasn’t good enough for Steve anymore. 

He glanced back toward the small gathering, a group of some of his favorite people in the world. His thoughts turned to Danny telling him, in the face of Steve needing to bear the truth to Aunt Deb about her fiancé, that she also deserved to be happy. He’d said it so simply, distilled all of the clutter into the only thing that truly mattered. From someone who’d experienced more than anyone’s fair share of misery, it was a profound bit of hope. Steve had been too close to see it that way, maybe, or maybe Danny just had more insight into humanity than he did. For most of Steve’s life, people were objectives. He studied their movements, their actions, sometimes their motives, but how much had he ever really understood anyone? He’d been so, so wrong about so, so many things. Governor Jameson, Jenna Kaye, Doris. Even Catherine. 

Except Danny. Danny, he got. He got the tinge of deep sorrow still hanging like ghosts on the edges of every smile, the weariness that made those smiles also not fully reach his eyes. He saw it every minute of every day, never more so than when they were breaking the news about the horrible thing their mother had done to Travis and Jake Kealoha. That was a gut punch to both of them. Steve wanted to fix it so that sadness of Danny’s wasn’t so present all the time. He wasn’t so foolish as to think he could eliminate it completely – not even Grace had managed that – but anything he could do, he would. Danny had given so much of himself in these last weeks.

_“When are you going to be willing to risk your heart?”_

Steve almost turned around, the memory of Deb’s words was so resonant. When, indeed. He still didn’t know why he’d gone along the Catherine road when Deb had mentioned her, when in that moment, if he were being one hundred percent honest with himself, the question had only conjured up images of Danny. Fear, he supposed. It was ironic how right Deb had been, though she hadn’t had any real way of knowing that. Steve could face any physical torment under the sun, but the thought of losing what he already had with Danny – steadfast friendship – for the chance at something more, it was starkly terrifying. He’d lost so much. He could not lose Danny.

His heart, though, he’d given longer ago than he’d been willing to admit. Steve put his heart on the line every day, whether or not the recipient of his love knew it. 

The cacophonous ring of Aunt Deb’s laughter cut through the night air, somehow a sharp reminder of the shortness of life. Oh, Steve had given his heart, but he hadn’t truly risked it. He shared it secretly, kept it locked away from himself as much as anyone, and he was beginning to see the cowardice in that. He knew Danny. He knew Danny would not leave him, no matter what. Time and time again, what Danny did consistently was stay at his side. The thing about him, when something finally hit him, it stuck. The risk was counterfeit, there was no such thing. Not when it came to Danny.

He knew what he had to do. He was ready to accept why Danny was so integral in his life he even had starring roles in his hallucinations, why in them Danny had been the heroic figure there to save his father from premature death. Steve’s ears buzzed with the scale of his understanding, but through it he heard Aunt Deb now singing something schmaltzy and romantic, so her. She was so, so happy and singing with abandon, when a year ago she’d been embarrassed to share her talent. He pictured the love for Leonard on her face and Danny was so right. She deserved it. Everyone did, even him. Steve spun on his heels.

And nearly ran Danny over. 

“Whoa, hey,” Danny said, hands up defensively, backing away like a man who'd been attacked by a friend too recently. “I was just coming to get you. I think the bride and groom are about to call it a night, didn’t want you to miss sending them off.”

 _The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face_ , that was what Deb was singing and it was horrible, sappy, and just about right. Steve stared at Danny, suddenly breathless. He couldn’t stop, though Danny’s expression went from neutral to alarmed in a heartbeat.

“What? Steve, what is it?”

There weren’t words. Steve wasn’t good with them, anyway. If he was ready to risk, he was risking it all. He shortened the distance between him and Danny in a few long strides, purposefully moving so that Danny couldn’t have time to retreat. Danny’s eyes were wide, confused now, and then maybe … not. Steve fairly crashed into him, wrapping his arms around his partner in a hold that wouldn’t be mistaken. 

He overshot, too overcome with what Danny would probably call Neanderthal tendencies, and instead of the powerful kiss he’d wanted, he and Danny crashed backward onto the sand. Elbows and knees banged and it was ugly, a mess just like he was. 

“Jesus, Steve, what the hell?” Danny grumbled in his ear, hands on him.

Steve raised himself up, and there was Danny glaring at him with one of his faces. Slightly bleary-eyed from the booze and that persistent sadness, curious and maybe hopeful. Steve started laughing, giggling really, not sure he was going to be able to stop even as Danny wriggled to get out from under him. He did the one thing he could to prevent that escape, he leaned down and planted his lips right on Danny’s. Danny froze beneath him. 

Shit, shit.

He _had_ screwed up. Steve started to pull away, froze himself when a strong hand landed on the nape of his neck and kept him in place. Danny relaxed beneath him, lips parting slightly and they were kissing in earnest. He hadn’t spent a lot of time wondering what it would be like to kiss Danny. He hadn’t waxed poetic about the flawlessness of their chemistry, thought how it would be perfect with Danny, but as far as kisses went, it was one of the best he’d ever experienced. In it, there was that love he’d come to rely on, comfort and trust and Danny. And holyshithot amazing. 

He could have kissed Danny forever, but the crunch of footsteps on the sand approaching made him draw back. Steve smiled at the way Danny had his eyes closed, how he opened them slowly and looked at him, eyes dark from more than the dim light and alcohol. Steve disentangled from Danny, smiling wider as he brushed against the evidence of Danny’s attraction for him, the hiss that came along with it. He flopped on his back next to his partner. 

“So, Steve,” Danny said, voice rough and tone uncertain. “What is this?”

Steve had been on this road for so long, only he’d been going the wrong direction. He knew now which direction he wanted to go, should have been going. He lolled his head, looked Danny in the eye. His right hand reached for Danny’s left, threaded their fingers together. 

“This is I love you, Danny,” Steve said, squeezed Danny’s hand.

Danny held on tight, and for at least this brief moment his smile was filled only with happiness.


End file.
